I find the "who killed more people?" question as proof of how evil some dictator was, to be rather pointless. Was Pol Pot not so bad because he killed less people? Part of the equation is also how many people they had access to. China, being the most populous country in the world, gave Mao more opportunity to kill people.
I think everybody agrees these people were terrible, but I do think the way they killed people matters. Hitler created a system to exterminate people on an industrial scale. Mao wanted to feed people and didn't let his ignorance about agriculture stop him, and considered dissenting (more reasonable) voices treasonous.
Considering dissent treason (hey, Trump!) is absolutely a sign of totalitarianism and something that can lead to disaster and death, but intentionally setting out to murder millions of people still feels like a different level of evil to me.
Mao also purged his opponents (or completely innocent people) in huge numbers, e.g. the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and Cultural Revolution were not about feeding people.
Of course. I'm not presenting his famine as an innocent accident. All of these dictators (and many others besides) tend to kill political opponents and don't mind a bit of collateral damage. But I think the industrial scale of the holocaust and indeed the large scale slaughter Khmer Rouge, are of a different order of evil.
I think everybody agrees these people were terrible, but I do think the way they killed people matters. Hitler created a system to exterminate people on an industrial scale. Mao wanted to feed people and didn't let his ignorance about agriculture stop him, and considered dissenting (more reasonable) voices treasonous.
Considering dissent treason (hey, Trump!) is absolutely a sign of totalitarianism and something that can lead to disaster and death, but intentionally setting out to murder millions of people still feels like a different level of evil to me.